: Did redirecting the root of the domain to a deep page hurt search engine rankings? A client had a Wordpress website with a very plain landing page which would redirect to the "home" page once

@Barnes591

I am starting to think I did something incredibly wrong! Did I?


Probably not.


Can this be fixed and how?


This may not be the answer you want to hear, but it should fix itself over time. Whenever you change the URL structure or content of your site in a significant way (and changing what Google perceives as your landing page counts as significant) you trigger a recalculation and re-evaluation of the site as a whole. During this process, which can take weeks or even months for larger sites, you will see the site drop in the SERPS and assuming there are no other structural or content issues, you should recover most of what was lost. Sometimes you improve from where you were, sometimes you drop a bit; it all depends on how well-structured the new landing page is for SEO.

Another common issue you might see from this scenario is a big rise in your bounce rate. Whereas users used to have to make the extra click from root to home and then leave, you know allow them to hit root and leave, raising the bounce rate and hurting the overall ranking. This shouldn't be fatal, but can delay your recovery time.

So what you need to do now is what closetnoc suggested in the comment and make sure your house is in order. Check to be sure the current sitemap is up to date and submitted to GWT. Check to make sure nothing is keeping the Googlebot out (robots.txt and WordPress' settings). Search Google with -site to be sure you are still in the index. Tune the new landing page and attempt to bring the bounce rate down if indeed it rose. If you do all of that, then just be patient and wait for the recovery.

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@Moriarity557

An easy fix is to put the actual home page on the home page and stop redirecting.

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